


The Eleventh Hour

by noneofyourdamnbusiness



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Father-Daughter Relationship, Jim "Chief" Hopper Lives, Jim is trapped in a Russian base, Loss of Powers, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mystery, Sort Of, Steve Harrington Saves the Day, The universe isn't out of the woods yet.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 07:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19719247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noneofyourdamnbusiness/pseuds/noneofyourdamnbusiness
Summary: Jim survives.  El searches.  The universe is not safe.  And Steve Harrington is not totally incompetent.





	The Eleventh Hour

Глава Oдин (Chapter One) 

When Jim was a kid, his mother used to play jazz and country day and night. She kept the radio on the top of the bookshelf, tuned on the FM frequency, while she cooked his daily meals. She was fond of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Django Reinhardt—especially the song “Daphne,” because it was her namesake. As the years went on, she got to playing Johnny Cash records on the turntable at night. If he closed his eyes, he could still hear “Walk the Line” playing in the background as his father crooned the lyrics, making eyes at Jim’s mother. By that point, Jim was nearly eighteen and ready to get the hell outta’ Dodge, so to speak. He was rough as a teenager, always getting in trouble and using too much grease in his hair (much to his deputy father’s chagrin). He was in a rush to get gone, and he could see that it was breaking his mama’s heart, but he figured he could always come back to visit. Of course, it was while he was away in Chicago in the summer of ’59 that she fell victim to a bad case of pneumonia. He hadn’t seen her in fifteen months. By fall, he’d joined the police academy.

If Jim were being entirely truthful, whenever he needed his spirits lifted it was this memory that did the trick: Daphne Hopper, dancing to Hank Williams’s “Cold, Cold Heart” in a yellow gingham dress with dough on her hands and a red-lipstick grin.

Jim really needed that memory right now.

“Рад снова тебя видеть, мой американский друг,” the Soviet bastard grinned down at him. Jim’s eyes weren’t yet adjusted to the light they’d abruptly turned on in his grimy shithole of a cell, so all he could see of the man’s features were crooked teeth in a black silhouette of a head. He wished Murray were here because the only bit of that he’d understood was the Russian variant of the word “American.” That’s the only thing they knew to call him at this point. He’d not said a word, not even when they’d asked multiple times, _very_ _persuasively_ and in English, what his name was. What had given him away as an American was his damn watch. His ex-wife had it inscribed for his 35th birthday, a decade ago. He didn’t even wear it for sentimentality; it was just a reliable fucking watch. Thankfully, it didn’t have his name on it, only an embarrassing nickname. 

“Вы чувствуете себя более разговорчивым сегодня, _Teddy Bear_?”

Really, though. _Fuck_ Diane for that goddamn watch.

The silhouette snapped his fingers and gestured to Jim, still supine on the floor and marinating in his own blood from his host’s last lovely visit. Two guards materialized and dragged Jim to his feet by his arms. This was new, and he didn’t like it, but he was curious to see what the rest of his prison looked like. As they pulled him out the door, he felt somehow even colder than he had inside the cell. It was freezing here. He tried to focus his eyes, swollen though the flesh around them may have been, to get a clear picture of his surroundings. 

It was an endless corridor, going down, down, down. Emptiness sat at the bottom, bathed in black. The soldiers’ boots clanged against the metal, and his bare feet dragged. As they began to descend the steps, he realized they were taking him there—all the way down that abyss, into the belly of this Russian Hell. He’d heard the way men protested before they were dragged away; their voices screamed and begged and grew faint the further down they went. He wondered what they knew that he didn’t. As he was taken past his fellow prisoners’ cells, one of them started to laugh through the door. The soldiers did nothing to quiet him, and soon other prisoners joined in. Their howls of glee echoed off the walls, sounding tinny and nightmarish. 

“Это очередь американца!” one man shouted, cackling viciously through his cell door. Again, all Jim caught was the word “Amerikantsa.” Something bad was at the bottom of this corridor, that was for damn sure. Unfortunately, it would be a few hours before he found out what.

Jim thought of his mother.

_между тем (Meanwhile)..._

Eleven thought of her father.

Well, of both of her fathers. The one she had called “Papa” had only loved her for her powers. Hopper had loved her in spite of them.

How ironic that now she was unable to use those powers to reconnect with any part of the latter. She couldn’t search for him, much as she wished she could. Joyce had told her what happened, and El knew it was hopeless to try. But Mike and the others had thought she was dead when she’d been pulled into the Upside Down. What if something like that had happened to Hopper when Joyce destroyed the Key? El’s vocabulary was not extensive, even after more than three years in society. She wasn’t sure what to call this feeling, but it gnawed at her. If he’d been there, Hopper would have told her it’s called a gut instinct.

For the fifth time that month, she emerged from the water in the bathtub, no closer to the dark place than she had been in nearly half a year. Beyond her desire to check—just to _check_ that Hopper wasn’t there—she also found herself oddly missing the experience of traveling to that dimension. When she had been very young, it was frightening to her. She was paralyzed by the solitary journey that led to waking in an empty eternity, a place where she could see and hear but never be seen or heard. That changed over time. She embraced it, jumped head-first. She took the torment Papa had put her through and became brave enough to wield it to help those she loved. It was a victory. And now that victory was hollow. 

El sat in the bathtub, wearing her bathing suit and duct-taped swimming goggles. She didn’t bother to pull them off. There was something cathartic about crying in the dark and feeling her tears build up behind the lenses. 

There was a very gentle clearing of a throat. El tore off the goggles to find Joyce standing in the doorway.

“I knocked, but I guess you didn’t hear me, and you left the door a crack open,” she smiled sadly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but…may I come in?”

El wiped at her eyes and wrapped her arms around her knees. She didn’t respond, but Joyce took that as a reluctant yes. She stepped inside, shut the door, and settled herself on the lid of the toilet.

The new house was really lovely, but it only had the one bathroom. With four inhabitants, El figured she couldn’t have expected much privacy. She was glad, at least, that it was Joyce who found her and not Will or Jonathan. 

“Did you get off work early?” she asked quietly, in a clipped but not unkind voice the Byers had long become accustomed to.

Joyce shook her head. “No, got off at five like I always do. I think you were just in the tub longer than usual. You don’t usually look this pruned.” El met her eyes, surprised. Well, apparently Joyce knew what she’d been up to. 

“Does anyone else know?” she asked, perhaps a bit desperately. Joyce smiled in her matronly way and shook her no.

“No, honey, just me. My boys can be oblivious, and they don’t spend so much time at home anymore.” She raised her eyebrows. “You know, it might do _you_ some good to get out more, too. It’s a new town, new school. Could help to meet people, get your mind off things.”

El didn’t say anything. She didn’t _want_ to meet new people. She didn’t _want_ to get her mind off things.

Seeing the emergence of a very teenage contrariness, Joyce sighed heavily and looked down at her hands. “El, they’ll come back, you know.”

“My powers will,” El agreed, staring at the wall of the bathroom. “ _He_ won’t.”

All at once, Joyce understood. “El, is that why you’ve been pushing yourself so hard? You think you can contact Hop?” El didn’t reply. _Taciturn girl_ , Joyce grumbled to herself. “Hop…” Joyce trailed off, unsure of how to go about the gentle reminder that her father was dead, obliterated, dematerialized by some kind of high-tech Russian weapon that was being used to reopen a tear in the fabric of the universe. She tried again: “El, do you not believe me about what happened down there?”

“Down there” in the Russian underground base was an interesting way to phrase it. “Down there” was only about five and a half months ago, thousands of feet down. It felt like a decade ago. For Joyce, it felt like it never even happened at all. Unless she was sleeping. When she was sleeping, she could never escape from “down there.” But for El, it represented a mysterious, intangible loss. She hadn’t seen how it happened, all the things that had gone wrong that led to Hop sacrificing himself. Joyce couldn’t expect El to trust her explanation of the facts, but she would be lying if she said El’s mistrust didn’t hurt.

“It isn’t because I don’t believe you,” the teenager in the tub murmured, perhaps sensing Joyce’s sadness. “But…I feel…” El blinked. The goggles floated face-down, and the rise and fall of her stomach with her intakes of air and exhalations caused rippled in the water. She focused on those details to recalibrate her train of thought. “I _feel him_ ,” she said finally, meeting Joyce’s eyes.

Joyce made a noise of surprise. “Your powers are back?”

“No,” El shook her head, disappointed in her own inability to convey herself, “no, not with my powers. I feel him with…” She shook her head again, then pointed uncertainly in the general direction of her belly. 

The older woman cocked her head. She didn’t know what to say to that. Part of her wanted to say that grief takes its toll in many forms, and one of those is by tormenting the living with its endless _what ifs_. But another part of her was reminded of a woman everyone thought was losing her mind, convinced her son was still alive. She couldn’t dismiss El’s feeling out of hand, not without acknowledging her own hypocrisy. Even if all this ended up being was a way for El to get closure, then the girl at least deserved that. Joyce wouldn’t let herself think about the other possibility (hope can be an insidious thing), but she knew she had a duty to at least help El get this out of her system. If she didn’t, the young telepath would never move on.

Joyce stood then, reaching into the tub to fish out the goggles. El’s face looked askance, unsure of Joyce’s intention. 

“What do you say we head to the store, pick up some salt, and find you a bigger tub?”

“What?” El’s eyes widened.

Joyce’s smile was a determined one. “If you need to look, you’ll need to get your powers back. And if your brilliant brain,” Joyce made a swirly pattern with her index finger and pointed at El’s furrowed brow, “is anything like any other muscle, it needs to be eased back into use. Like—physical therapy!” She made a face that said, _Why the hell not? That analogy is as good as any other._ El still didn’t seem to follow. Joyce held out her hand. “What do you say we get you some practice?”


End file.
